Leedy's Closing After 66 Years

August 4, 1985|By Yvonne C.T. Vassel of The Sentinel Staff

WINTER PARK — For 66 years the name Leedy's has been a part of Park Avenue.

Now the corner section of the store at Park and New England avenues is littered with empty clothes racks and naked mannequins. Next door, in the materials section, customers sort through bolts of cloth marked down for a quick going-out-of-business sale.

''It's been fun and very successful but I'm tired,'' said Leedy's owner Reba Campbell.

Campbell bought the store in April 1962 but its history goes back to 1919 when Ruth and R.F. Leedy bought a business called Miss Vicks Hat Shop that was in another Park Avenue building, Campbell said.

''They started adding things as people asked for them and in the 1930s moved to the fabric shop where we are now. They ran it until 1954 when they sold it to their daughter, Lorraine Leedy Stewart,'' Campbell said.

Campbell said she stumbled into working in retail shortly after leaving high school in Tennessee and found that it ''hit me right.''

Howver, closing the store was not a painful decision, Campbell said.

''I might possibly have held on through the summer and did it at Christmas . . . that's a nice time to go out of business. But I had viral meningitis in January and February and I missed the market. I didn't get my buying done so I thought this was a good time to do it,'' she said.

When the decision was made, she circulated the word to customers as they came in and a lot of merchandise was sold before the going-out-of-busine ss sale was advertised, she said.

''I wasn't able to sell the business so I'm selling my stock out,'' Campbell said. ''I hope to be out by mid-August.'' Two businesses from Colony Gardens are then expected to move into the Leedy's building.

In the 23 years she has run Leedy's, the families of many customers have become as familiar as her own, Campbell said.

''But I've been working 12-, 14-hour days, six and sometimes seven days a week. I'm going to miss the friends I've made but hopefully I'll still see them,'' she said. ''I couldn't be happier. I know the mantle's lifted and nobody can understand why I'm so cheerful . . . it took as much time to keep up with what was new in fashion as it did to run the store.''

Campbell said she has no fears about the future of Park Avenue and is not sentimental about the passing of stores such as hers and Cottrell's 5 & 10 Cent Store, which closed last week.

''I've enjoyed it but it's time for someone else to have the fun,'' Campbell said. ''Changing, changing, but that's the way life is and most of the time it's for the better. We've been here a long time. It's time for another new age.''